A
segment from the 10th century Old English colophon to the Lindisfarne
Gospels (British Library, Cotton Nero D IV, f.259). Image downloaded from the British Library and made accessible under a Creative Commons licence. The Lindisfarne Gospels are presented in a complete digital facsimile by the British Library here.

Pass
cursor over letters to see enlarged examples taken from the page illustrated
above.

Distinctive
letters
:As can be seen now that we have a colour photograph, the colophon is is rubric.

This form of insular
minuscule used for Old
English has essentially the same letter forms as that used for Latin,
with the addition of both the edh
and thorn characters
to represent th. This example lacks the letters
k, q, w,
x or z. The
letter j only appears in a Latin name.

The
letter a comes in two forms, closed at the
top and open. Ascenders of letters such as b and l are wedged at the top. The letters r, s and f are easily confused, as all tend to
extend below the baseline and are similar in general shape. The letter
d has a backsloping ascender, while g is of the open lightning bolt form. While the letters u and v are diffentiated, in that there is
a rounded and an angular form, the angular form seems to be used in most
cases as either vowel or consonant.

The
trickiest ligature
is the dipthong ae, which is written as an e with a little hook on the back.

If you
are looking at this page without frames, there is more information about
medieval writing to be found by going to the home
page (framed) or the site map
(no frames). This
site is created and maintained by Dr
Dianne Tillotson, freelance researcher and compulsive multimedia and
web author. Comments are welcome. Material on this web site is copyright,
but some parts more so than others. Please check here
for copyright status and usage before you start making free with it. This
page last modified 21/3/2014.